


Badgering around the Christmas Tree

by Shrewreadings



Series: Badger-Verse [7]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Badgers, Crack, Gen, Group 8-B, Holidays, Humor, Mentoring Kid Fic, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shrewreadings/pseuds/Shrewreadings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yes, careless words from lawyers <i>can</i> jinx the holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [copperbadge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/gifts).



"All right, let's see." Ettie Swift, the force of nature that had been running shipping and deliveries of SHIELD since her mother retired from the position in 1979, scanned the package's barcode, looked at the computer, typed a command, and a line showed up on the electronic signature pad in front of Caroline. "Sign, please."

Caroline signed, and pushed the 'enter' button.

Ettie passed the box over to Caroline. "All yours."

"Thanks," Caroline said, taking the box. It was relatively light and rattled a bit. She looked at the return address: Houston, Texas. "Oooh. Susan. Awesome."

"Susan?"

"College friend. Wonder why she sent it here, I thought she had my home address." Caroline picked the box up, and headed for the exit. "Thanks, Ettie!"

"You're welcome, Caroline."

Shipping and receiving was located in sub-basement four, under the parking deck.  This meant Caroline had fourteen floors to ride through to get back to Legal before she remembered that her office had been bumped up to the 36th floor so that Darcy could be positioned between her and Coulson's office. "Damn." She pushed the button for 36 just as the elevator arrived at 10 and Robbie Burr got on.

Robbie looked at the floor selected and nodded.  "Morning. Welcome back."

"Ma'am." Caroline answered.

Robbie thwapped Caroline on the back of the head with the manila folder in her hand. "Stop that. You did your detention and wrote your lines. It's done. Let it go."

"Not my forte." Caroline replied.

"No sheep." Robbie retorted.

Caroline's head turned to look at Robbie, eyebrows up. "Sheep?" she asked cautiously.

"Niece is learning to talk so we're doing some expletive substitution at home. Her mother would rather her daycare teachers ask what's going on with her obsession with farm animals instead of sending home notes about foul language." Robbie explained.

"Asking, so to speak, about her obsession with the fowl, rather than the foul?"

Robbie thwapped her again. "So, letting go is not your forte. We'd noticed. It's part of what makes you good for this job. The other part is remembering _to_ let go when surrounded, outgunned, outnumbered and outclassed. And trust me when I tell you that you're not in Nick Fury's weight class."  The elevator stopped at the 28 th floor and four members of a returning field team piled on to the elevator.  They were silent for a floor or two. The field team got off at the 32nd then Robbie added, "At least, not yet. What's in the box?"

"Don't know yet. Came in while I was out of the office."

"And it's just been sitting in shipping? Is that safe?"

"It's possible Susan's clearance is higher than both of ours put together. She works for Mission Control in Houston."

"Ah. The rocket scientist?"

"Yep."  The elevator arrived at 36 and they both got out.

"What would she be sending you?"

"Usually it's some holiday puzzle." Caroline walked to her office, passing the as-yet empty desk which had a nameplate for Darcy sitting on it. "Once she sent me a package full of cozies for the contents of the toy box."

Robbie burst into laughter as she knocked on Phil's door. "You're kidding?"

Caroline shook her head. "Hand crocheted. Rainbow cotton: that stuff that changes color along the strand? Very psychedelic."

"Willing to wait until I'm free to open it?"

Caroline shrugged. "It's waited a week: it'll keep a while longer. I'm not going anywhere."

"Literally," Phil answered, opening his door to let in Robbie. "How's the license agreement for the Foster data coming?"

"Slowly." Caroline answered. "But it looks like I don't have to sit the Asgardian bar to get deposition of Heimdall. This is a good thing. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't pass."

"Ask Thor to introduce you to Sif," Phil suggested. "Apparently she had to get through their equivalent of the Supreme Court to get a chance to combat."

"Interesting," Robbie said. "I wouldn't have thought they'd have gender and combat issues. Valkyries and what have you."

Phil shrugged. "Not my area. 2 PM, Ms. Lakehurst."

"I'll see you then, Agent Coulson." Caroline stepped into her office and closed the door with a note of finality.

 

Phil sighed and looked at Robbie. "That really could have gone better."

"Nah. She didn't start muttering 'exterminate.'" Robbie sat down in Phil's guest chair, and passed the file over to Phil.

"She's a Whovian?" Phil took the file and opened Robbie's file on the legal fallout from a Chicago field team's inadvertent destruction of a used car dealership.

"Only when it comes to Blue Ridge Combined." Robbie answered. She folded her hands in her lap and steepled her index. "So, full marks for subtlety, but I'm pretty sure that you're the one who taught _me_ how to use the PDF attachment feature. Feel like telling me why you really wanted me to come up here?"

"Just wanted to see your bright shining face." Phil set the file aside. "And to ask for your input."

"On?"

"The Initiative's Secret Santa."

Robbie smiled. "Don't have one. We always go with a white elephant in Legal. Next item?"

"Too late. And I drew Caroline's name."

"And this just after you suspended her for a week."

"Precisely. And I didn't have any ideas to begin with. I'm lousy at these things, just ask Clint." Phil reached out, picked a yardstick up from where it stood in the corner, and used it as a lever to flick a copy of _Pillars of the Earth_ at the vent. The impact shook the office's entire ceiling.

"It's true," the vent replied. "He always ends up giving people slippers."

"Slippers are useful." Robbie commented.

"But not appropriate when you've just told someone to spend a week 'cooling off' at home."

Robbie winced. "Point. I'll see what I can get out of her, shall I?"

"Please do. And on this…" he looked at the VINs. "They're really asking us to pay Kelley Blue Book on a 2000 Geo Metro?"

"They can always ask." Robbie pursed her lips. "Have you thought of asking her Aunt Harriet?"

"Aunt Harriet?"

"Caroline's great-aunt Harriet Lakehurst. Canadian. RCMP. Used to keep her for summers." Robbie stood up and smoothed her skirt down. "I'll introduce you and carbon you on the e-mail."

"Thanks."

"No problem." Robbie saw herself out and knocked on Caroline's door.

 

Caroline was looking at the contents of the box: a skeleton wearing a Father Christmas robe and carrying a scythe.

" _A Christmas Carol_ , as filmed by Ingmar Bergman?" Robbie sat down.

"Not quite. _Hogfather_. Terry Pratchett, the British writer?"

"Ah. Vimes' theory of socio-economic inequality. I remember now." She crossed her legs and looked thoughtfully at her shoes. "The rich get richer."

"And the poor still have wet feet." Caroline pulled the lid off of the tin. She looked at the contents. "Oh, my god, it's full of stars."

Robbie leaned forward. The tin was filled with frosted cookies decorated with constellations. She snickered. "Are they good?"

"If Susan baked them? Their sale was the leading funding source for the field trips of both the geology _and_ the astronomy clubs for four years."

"Well, then." Robbie reached out to take one.

Caroline swatted the hand and shook her head. "Susan knows my home address. She sent this here, and sent constellations." She tilted her head. "Is today Thursday?"

"It is."

"Excellent. We've got 8-B in the Bronx."  Caroline put the tin back in the box and set it aside, turning to the most recent proposal from Dr. Foster's attorney regarding licensing fees.

 

*~*~*

 

"If I'd drawn Tony, I'd have been fine," Caroline complained to Bruce on their way to the Bronx at 3:30.

Bruce chuckled "'Fine?' You know what to buy the billionaire that has everything?" His question was not merely polite: he'd drawn Tony's name for the Initiative's Secret Santa.

"No, but I _do_ know what to buy an engineer. Gran was an engineer. Great Uncle James was an engineer. Brian-the-Ex was an engineer. Engineers are easy." She navigated the SHIELD SUV around a pack of roving taxis. "In more than one way."

"What's the other way that they're easy?"

"Redneck Repair Kit." Bruce's brow furrowed, and Caroline expanded. "Duct tape and WD-40. Spade Hardware sells them shrink-wrapped together.  Get an engineer any quantity of them, and you're golden. Extra points if you get [the flow-chart](http://www.cyclelicio.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/flowchart-500x372.jpg) to go with."

"Awesome. Thanks."

"You drew Tony, didn't you."

"You might very well think such things. I couldn't possibly comment."

"I knew loaning you the Francis Urquhart trilogy was a potential hazard. Oooh! Parking!" Caroline pulled them into an empty spot in the South Bronx Community Center's parking lot next to the Audi A8 Happy was showing off to some of the older kids with the tag 'Stark 144.' She climbed out, fished the box and tin of cookies out of the back seat with her brief-tote, and looked at the tag. "Happy, does he actually _have_ 144 cars? I know he's trying to bail the US out of the recession by himself but… really?"

"Nah," Happy replied. "This is the 13th addition."

"Thirteenth? So he goes by squares?"

"Nope," Bruce answered. "Fibonacci." He had his backpack over his shoulder and a pack of transparency plastics in his hand. "Shall we?"

"Yep." Caroline closed the doors, locked the car, and activated the SHIELD alarm on it. "And damn it, now I want [nachos](http://chelloroo.wikispaces.com/file/view/foxtrot.fibonachos.gif/156997165/foxtrot.fibonachos.gif)."

"Sorry." Bruce said, not sounding sorry at all.

 

 

"Good afternoon, 8-B, Dr. Banner, Captain Rogers, Dr. Stark." Caroline said to the group gathered around a table with the box in the center of it. "In the fall of 1995, I moved into a dormitory room in Northfield, MN, which I shared with Susan Moore, an astronomy and physics major from Oxford, MS.  We continued to share a room until our junior year, when we took adjacent rooms in the same hall. We stayed in contact through graduate school: first with her at Cal Tech and me at Michigan, then, after she finished her grad work, with her in Huntsville, AL and me at Brooklyn College of Law."

"Why _did_ you pack up and come east, anyway?" Tony asked.

"Institutionalized heresy. I was violently opposed to Michigan's decision to replace the University of Michigan Wolverines at the head of their pantheon with the Red Wings." Bruce chuckled and Steve snorted: Caroline's answers to Tony's badgering on the topic had been getting increasingly creative. "Dr. Moore, by now with NASA, moved from Huntsville to Houston, where she has remained, working on astrophysics projects for the agency."

"On November 22nd, Dr. Moore shipped the following to Ms. Lakehurst's office address at SHIELD." Bruce picked up. "It arrived on the 28th, passed all security screenings, and sat, unclaimed, until Ms. Lakehurst's return today."

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to solve the riddle of what Dr. Moore is attempting to communicate to me." Caroline nudged the box. "You may take photos and samples of the content, use the computer as you see fit, and consult any of the adults present at any time. Team-work is encouraged, as is making sure you have _documented_ all contents before consuming them. You have until the end of the afternoon. Good luck."

"Okay, dimensions, images, and transcription of all writing…" Luisa began.

"I'll get the tape measure. Do we want Imperial or metric?" Daniel asked.

"Both." Roberto answered. "And we need to get samples of the tape, too…"

Evetta turned to Tony and asked, "can I borrow…" Caroline cleared her throat, and Evetta began again. "May I borrow your phone, please?"

"Sure thing." Tony handed the phone over, and Evetta began taking pictures of the box.

8-B attacked the project, scattering to the corners of the classroom, finding materials, and starting a list of potential variables.

"Is there an actual puzzle here?" Steve asked, as Caroline sat back, pulled out her tablet, and started to catch up.

"There is. And I don't know what the solution is: usually she sends it to me at home, and then the solution follows sometime around Epiphany. It's kind of our version of the King William's College Quiz."

"The what?" Bruce asked, handing over the transparencies with their tissue paper separators to Roberto so he could get an accurate tracing of the textures of the package.

"Oooh, you are in for a treat." Tony said. "Every year, the kids at King William's College on the Isle of Man get this quiz. It's got 18 sections, each with, what, ten questions?"

"Sounds right." Caroline said, "each worth two points. Kids get the quiz twice: once, the day before the Christmas holidays start, once the first day back from the holidays. It's a cryptographic general knowledge quiz."

"Sorry?" Steve said.

"Challenge 1: Figure out what the hell the question is asking." Tony said.

"Challenge 2: figure out the answer to the question." Caroline added. "So, for example…" She pulled up examples on her tablet. "2010-2011, Group 6: What was updated by HG Wells? What might be perceived as an apiary? Which island is doubly recognized on 198?"

"Utsire." Steve answered.

Caroline blinked, looked at the answer. "Okay, how the _flock_ did you know that?"

"I put the Shipping Forecast on a loop when Tony's stuck in one of his insomniac loops and won't fall asleep. He's usually out by the time it's gotten to Wight. I stream it over Jarvis, but it broadcasts on AM 198." It was also one of the first things Steve had streamed on his computer when he'd woken up. The pattern of the names was familiar and the reader's reminded him of Peggy's received pronunciation. If it gave him freakishly detailed insight into the weather of the North Sea and north Atlantic, well, that was just a bonus, wasn't it?

"Got it.  Anyway, the quiz is available off the _Guardian_ 's web page on Christmas Eve," Caroline added. "Which will give y'all something to do."

"Way to jinx the holiday, Lakehurst," Tony said. "Now we're _certain_ to be stuck fighting off some moron's minions of mayhem."

"Is that better or worse than a halfwit's henchpeople of misrule?" Bruce asked.

"Foul," Caroline ruled in the ongoing figure of speech variation of Stoppard's game of questions. "Failure to repeat alliteration. Tony's point, fifteen all."

 

*~*~*

 

By the end of the afternoon, the cookies had been consumed, and the message decoded: 'Happy Midwinter Holiday of your Moral, Ethical, Religious or Ideological Choice to Everyone at SHIELD from All of Us at Mission Control.'  Caroline had driven Bruce back to the Tower, parked the SUV in the basement, and was headed for the subway when her phone went off. She pulled it out of the holster, glanced at it, and answered, "Слушаю."

The stream of Russian invective that poured out from the other end of the phone was both creative and loud. Caroline pulled the phone away from her ear, and waited for it to finish. Then she asked, "Наташа Советовна, где вы?"

"I'm in the Target." Natasha answered, "And I'm quite certain we're past the formal-you stage."

"What happened?" Caroline asked.

"They. Have left. Us off. AGAIN." Natasha went back into Russian invective. The outpouring went on for several moments before it got quieter and Clint spoke into the phone.

"I'm not sure if it's worse than when they packaged me on to something with the Eagles' logo."

"Boston College, Tennessee Tech or Oral Roberts University?" Caroline asked.

"Does it _MATTER?_ " Clint asked, sounding about as irate as Natasha.

Caroline shook her head. "No, it doesn't. Come on home, I'll hammer out a suitably threatening 'you really think pissing off people named for venomous arachnids and James Fennimore Cooper characters is a good idea?' letter and we'll figure out what you want to do next, all right? I'd better let Bruce know I'm staying for dinner."

"What's he making?" Clint asked.

"No clue." Caroline answered. " _Don't_ forget the tree skirt, _or_ the Furby, or we'll never let hear the end of it."

"Got it. See you in a bit." Clint hung up Natasha's phone.

Caroline hung up, squeezed her eyes shut, muttered, "deliver me from morons," and headed for the elevator up to the Avengers' residential level.

 

"Good evening, Ms. Lakehurst."

"Hi, Jarvis."  Caroline set the bag down on the chair in the hall and headed for the kitchen.

"We weren't expecting you." The AI commented.

"Yes, neither was I. Apparently there are some people in Target's corporate headquarters that are unable to take the hint of polite letters."

"Agents Romanov and Barton have been offended by their retail selections once more, I take it?"

"I think we'll be lucky if I can keep them from designating the Bulls-eye logo as a legitimate target whenever sighted." Caroline sighed and headed into the kitchen. "Bruce, am I going to foul up whatever you're cooking if I hang?"

"I'd really rather you didn't: I'm morally opposed to capital punishment." Bruce answered, stirring the contents of a Crock Pot.

"Phbbbbt." Caroline blew him a raspberry. "How about if I hang out for dinner?"

"No problem, it's just curry."

"Thank you. What can I do to help until Natasha and Clint get home?"

Bruce pointed at the table. "You can sit down, have a beer…"

"Can't, got to go back to work when they get here."

He carried on as if she hadn't interrupted, "and read something not for work or your dissertation."

"Took the afternoon off already, remember?" Caroline asked. "Box full of stars? Besides, I need to check Steve's homework."

Bruce tilted his head thoughtfully and started the rice cooker. "Okay, I'll concede the afternoon. 8-B doesn't count as 'work.'"

"Even if you do get paid for it." Tony said, coming in.

"What did you do, come back by way of Paramus?" Bruce asked.

"Might as well have done." Steve said. "Pepper had to divert to Teterboro. The GWB was packed."

"At least you got there," Pepper added. "I was beginning to contemplate the ferry." She stepped out of her heels and picked them up. "I'm showering; I can _feel_ the slime of Congressmen clinging to me."

"I left the soul-exfoliating scrub out for you." Tony said as she passed.

Caroline looked at Steve. "Homework?"

"Ah." Steve said, rubbing the back of his neck. "About that."

Caroline leaned back against the counter, crossed her arms over her chest, and her feet at the ankles. " _Surely_ you didn't have trouble coming up with ten social issues and generalized inequalities you wanted fixed."

"Oh, I came up with ten." Steve answered. "It was… limiting it to ten I found difficult."

"Mmm?"

"And then in my class Mitzi Whittle suggested that I look at some of the humane societies…"

"Wait. Stop. Go back." Tony said. "How did you survive being in a small, confined space with Mitzi Whittle, a woman, whom I know from _painful_ personal experience, has absolutely no mental filter,"

"That's rich," Bruce muttered, stirring the Punjab eggplant.

Tony glared at Bruce's back and continued, " _or_ sense of personal space?"

"Or come across her to begin with?" Caroline said.

"Oh, I'm taking that class on philanthropy they've got at the Rockefeller Foundation," Steve answered.  "It seemed like a logical place to start for some of the long-term stuff."

"Not what I meant," Caroline replied. "It's December. Shouldn't she be detoxing in Gstaad?"

"Condition of her probation for her last drug possession arrest." Tony answered. "Had to surrender her passport."

"How come they didn't ask me for that?" Steve asked Caroline.

"Because you're Steve Rogers." She answered. "Mitzi Whittle's been caught in possession more times than Tony's got patents."

Bruce chimed in. "If that's not hyperbole, why isn't she in jail?" He set the spoon down next to the stove, turned the pan down to very low, put the lid on, and grabbed his beer before coming around the island and steering Caroline into a chair. "Sit."

"Arf." She said, sitting. "And to answer your question, Fitzgerald. The rich are different." She looked back at Steve. "Ten things. 8-B counts as one."

"One-half." Tony countered. "Half of what's coming at them is my fault, so I'm covering half."

"Should really be one third," Bruce mused, sitting down next to Caroline and opening the cricket pages from the _Times of India_. "Not your fault SHIELD's got that 8-hour policy."

"Yeah, but I'm gouging them on the filtering earpiece licenses, so it'll wash out in the end." Tony answered, sitting down and opening his e-mail. "I run the R&D division of a Fortune 500 company that my grandfather started. I'm its ex CEO. Why is there cheap Viagra spam in my inbox?"

"Forty-two." Caroline answered. "8-B. One. Second?"

Steve sat down. "You remember Sergeant Smidt from the Veterans' fund drive?"

She nodded. "And Blue Ridge Combined's rather… curious interpretation as to what counted for compliance with the FCC rules about mobile phones for low income individuals."

"I thought maybe something on two fronts – helping vets transition, and getting homeless vets cell phones. Tie it to something concrete, like following up with healthcare stuff, or career stuff?"

Caroline nodded, tapped the table, opened a new document and typed quickly. "Entirely new project, or something tied into already existing?"

"Not sure yet."

"I'll dig up both." She replied. "Three?"

Steve took a deep breath and pulled the list out of his pocket, setting it on the table.

 

Natasha and Clint found them there when they got back from the Target, bag with the tree-skirt in hand.

"And that's what the Boy Scouts might have against you." Pepper was finishing, sitting at the table next to Phil.

Steve looked appalled. He looked to Caroline, who shrugged.

"Supreme Court said that they were a private organization, and that they had a right to say who could come into it. Whether they're allowed to keep using publicly owned facilities at preferential rates while not complying with rules that states have about non-discrimination isn't something that's gotten to the Court yet."

"Okay, so scratch _that_ off the list." He took 'scholarships for scout camps' off the list.

"Girl Scouts, mind," Pepper said, "said they didn't care about the gender preferences of their troop leaders."

"Camp Fire, too." Caroline added. Steve looked puzzled. "Camp Fire Girls went co-ed in 1975."

"Ah."

"I can dig up alternatives for you." Caroline said. She looked up and took in the ferocity of Natasha's glare.

"Thanks."

Caroline held her hand out to Natasha. "Давай. Let's see it."  Natasha passed over the phone and Caroline pulled up the pictures she and Clint had taken. "Oh, my. They really _did_ stick their feet in it, didn't they."

"Does that mean I can cut them off?"

"Not yet. But we'll set a date, shall we? Let's do this in the library." 

"Dinner in 15." Bruce said.

Caroline nodded, and followed Clint and Natasha to the library where her Tower-resident laptop lived.

*~*~*

_Dear Sirs:_

_As you are aware, the Avengers Initiative (the Initiative) is an autonomous department of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (SHIELD). The Agreement Target Corporation signed with the Initiative provides that licensed materials sold under the Initiative's logo, and carrying the likenesses of members of the Initiative will in every group-image instance include the likenesses of the Black Widow and Hawkeye. I attach images taken of and receipts for Christmas tree ornaments and licensed toys purchased at the Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY Target location. You will note that none of these items contain images of the Black Widow, and that the items in the file labeled FAT-3 lack images of both the Black Widow and Hawkeye._

_Accordingly, Target is in breach and direct violation of its Agreement contract with both SHIELD and the Initiative. If Target does not remove these and other items in violation of the Agreement from its retail offerings and replace them with items in compliance with the Agreement, a lawsuit will be commenced against Target Corporation, seeking both monetary damages and compensatory actions to be proved at trial._

_Confirmation in writing of Target Corporation's cessation of violation of its Agreement with the Initiative and SHIELD is expected by the close of business Eastern Daylight Savings Time on…_

 

"Natasha, Clint, I need a date for the bullheaded blockheads at the Bullseye's deadline." Caroline called from the Tower's library.

"What's today?" Clint asked.

"Thursday."

"Helpful." Natasha observed.

"Live to serve. Date?"

Natasha moved a rook against Clint. "Check."

"Damn. How'd that happen?"

"Same as always, you left your right open. You've got to start working on that."

Clint stared at the board and asked, "what's custom and practice for these things?"

Caroline waggled a hand in the air. "We gave them 30 days last time. They didn't seem to get the message."

"Fourteen, then." Natasha said.

"You got it." Caroline finished the letter, and looked up as Phil knocked on the door. "Sir?"

"Dinner."

"Good timing. Jarvis, is there an actual _printer_ in this place?"

"Yes, Ms. Lakehurst. Shall I network in your laptop?"

"Please."  The message box popped up telling her the new printer was connected. "Excellent. Print it, Initiative letterhead, five copies, please. Where can I pick them up?"

"The printing and duplicating center is in the utility closet off the hall, Ms. Lakehurst. Shall I print an envelope?"

"Nope, I'll be Fed Exing. Waybill'd be good." Caroline saved the document and shut the laptop down. "Hey, wow, almost a normal stopping time. Who'd'a thunk?" She stood and stretched.

"I hear there was some excitement in Brooklyn." Phil said, as she passed him heading to the hall.

"So it would seem, sir." Caroline answered.

Clint thwapped Caroline upside the head. "Seriously, relax. I heard Robbie give you the detention lecture. Let it go."

"Clint." Natasha said. He looked up, she shook her head slightly.

Clint shrugged and waited for Natasha and Caroline to leave the library. He wrapped an arm around Phil. "2 PM go okay?"

"Fine. We've actually got a chance of finishing this by the end of the year. More importantly," Phil asked, "did you get the tree skirt?"

"And the Furby." Clint answered. "That would be how we stumbled into the Licensed Toy aisle."

"Sorry about that."

"Don't be. I learned all _kinds_ of new vocabulary." Clint smiled. "I've got plans of trying it out tonight. I hope pink and teal is acceptable in Furby fur color?"

"Sounds good to me." Phil smiled.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_Thursday, December 7 th_

 

"Really, I'm torn. Popovers certainly have better targeting potential, but the joy of cutting into a Yorkshire pudding is pretty much unparalleled." Clint said with a shrug. 

"Do one for the family, the other for us?" Natasha suggested.

"Oh, I know I'm doing _both_ for us." Clint answered. "Otherwise we'll run out halfway through. The question's really for Phil's family."

"I suspect Mom would really, really prefer we not have a food fight." Phil answered.

"Altitude." Bruce pointed out. "Have you ever actually made them at sea level?"

"Hmm." Clint said. "I have not. I shall have to locate a kitchen at sea level."

The 10 foot tall, live Christmas tree in the living room rustled and shook.

"Sam, what are you up to?" Steve called across from where he sat at the table.

The young mother chattered and tapped against the tree. Jarvis translated "I think I saw Moxie climbing this way."

"Hell." Steve pushed back from the table and headed for the whelping box under the Habitrail's terminus in the living room.  He did a head-count: four badger kits. Moxie, indeed, was missing from the box.

"Need some help?" Phil asked as Steve buried his head and torso inside the tree.

"She's been batting at the lights all day. I thought she'd conked out after dinner…" There was an indignant-sounding squeak, and then the Halleluiah Chorus from _The Messiah_ blasted out from under the tree.

Steve squawked. "Jesus, what the hell's that?" He emerged from the tree, a foot planted firmly on the tree skirt, Moxie cradled in one hand.

"Handel." Clint answered.

"I noticed." Steve answered. "But why is it spewing out of the tree skirt?" Moxie chirped from the hand that held her. "Oh, please. You do _too_ know better." He opened the Habitrail lid over the whelping box, settled the kit back into the nest with her siblings. "And it's past your bedtime."

"Look out, kid, Dad sounds like he's going to ground you." Tony said.

" _And_ Rusty." Steve replied. "I can see how the latch got opened."

"And this eliminates Sam as a suspect how?" Tony asked, leaning back in his chair and looking over into the living room. "And it's a musical tree skirt."

"Sam doesn't usually lock the latch back after herself. She likes being able to get back to the kits."

"You said it was all right if we explored," Sam tapped and Jarvis translated.

"Yes, but that wasn't intended to include the _Christmas tree._ " Steve looked at Sam, exasperated as she proceeded to climb him and perch on his shoulder.

"It's a tree. We're badgers. What do you expect?"

Caroline watched the entire discussion, pushed her sweater arm up and pinched herself. "Ow. Does that count for proof of consciousness?"

Natasha smacked her on the back of her head.

"Ow." Caroline repeated. She rubbed the back of her head and said, "Okay, that certainly does. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"Musical tree skirt?" Steve sat back down at the table, Sam riding his shoulder.

"It was the only one they had left." Natasha explained. "Which is kind of alarming, given it's only the first week of December."

The tree skirt began singing ["The Christmas Can-Can."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E-47VmFopE)

"It's not wrong." Phil said. "I'm just glad you found that Furby for Sarah. Her mother told me…"

"Sarah's mother." Clint said thoughtfully. "That's your older…?"

"Younger." Phil corrected.

"Sister, Amy. And Sarah just turned six this past summer."

"Correct. And what she wanted most is a Furby. And Amy says there's not a single one to be found in the metropolitan Boston area."

"I'm kind of surprised," Tony said. "Usually you plan better for the Christmas crush of retail. That's what the logistics department is _for_."

"We always plan better for such things at SHIELD." Phil said smugly.

"True. I got my requests into the Nuremberg office four weeks ago." Caroline said.

"What were you getting from the Nuremburg office?" Pepper asked.

"[Lebküchen tins](http://www.aboutgermanproducts.com/pics/lebkuchen-schmidt-gingerbread-cookies.jpg)." Caroline answered.

"For what?" Clint asked.

Caroline smiled rather than answer.

 

~*~*~

 

The banishment of the tree skirt was first suggested after it spat out "Baby it's Cold Outside," and Tony and Clint got into a dispute over what the cocktail in the line 'hey, what's in this drink?' was. Tony supported the Irish coffee school, while Clint was a strong proponent of spiked eggnog. The argument had started to get heated when Natasha settled it pointing out that the misogyny of the carol was not helped by the implication that the tenor was feeding the soprano roofies.

The next day, Rusty landed on the skirt from halfway up the tree five times in two minutes, triggering differing carol fragments each time. Phil, attempting to put batteries into the Furby, had dropped both the magnifier and the screwdriver each time, and one of the near-microscopic screws twice.  By the time BirdFish had deployed its magnet to retrieve the screw, Phil was muttering " _assault_ and batteries not included, more like it." Bruce, jarred out of the journal article he was trying to read, had verdantly suggested that the tree skirt should be relocated.

With a catapult.

"Never got a chance to do pumpkin chunkin'," Tony mused, glaring at the Furby he'd gently taken away from Phil.

"Pumpkin chunking?" Steve asked, removing the batteries from the skirt and folding it up. "Like the special the Mythbusters did at Thanksgiving?"

"Yep. Probably wouldn't be fair to enter now. Unless there's a pro division."

"Or budget constraints." Bruce said. "You got the kids entered for Odyssey, yes?"

"Pepper's new PA made sure the paperwork was timely filed." Tony answered. "My God, this is complete crap. I wonder if I should…"

" ** _NO._** " Steve, Phil and Bruce chorused.

"You didn't even know what I was going to suggest."

"Yes, we do." Phil answered. "You were going to suggest buying the company out."

"So that you could make something better." Bruce added, starting to sketch out the math for the article he was reading.

"And sell it for less. Or more. Or add lasers." Steve finished.

"C'mon, lasers are always a good idea." Tony got the battery case open, slid the batteries in, and replaced the cover.

"Not on children's toys, they're not." Steve said, sliding behind Tony. He tipped Tony's face up and kissed him. "Besides. You promised accounting that you'd hold off on any new companies until after the first of the year."

Tony put the Furby back in its box and turned in the kitchen seat to kiss Steve back. "Got something to distract me with, then?"

"I'll think of something." Steve tugged Tony out of his chair and toward their room.

Rusty landed on the now power-less tree skirt. He pushed his paws around, then tapped on the wall, "why isn't it singing any more?"

"Sorry, kid, it was driving the humans nuts." Tony called back as Steve closed their door.

Rusty looked at Phil. "There are nuts?" he tapped.

"Mixed ones. Living on various levels of this building." Phil muttered. He got up from the table and got Rusty a bowl of boiled peanuts. "Here you go."

"Thank you." Rusty tapped, and started devouring.

"You're welcome." Phil said, sat back down at the table, and banged his head into the table.

"Problem?" Bruce asked.

"Just wondering how my life got to the point that exchanging pleasantries with a talking badger is the _least_ strange things I've done today."

"And the strangest?"

"Explaining WalMart to Heimdall."

"That _is_ strange."

"You have no idea."

 

 

_Friday, December 21 st  _

 

"Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime." Phil said from outside Caroline's door.

She disengaged the alarm, opened the door, and looked at Clint.

"All seeing eyes read the heart." He held up a bag from the bagel bakery. "And we brought bagels."

"Well, then, do, please, come in." She stepped back.

Phil handed her an envelope as he stepped in. "Got a go-bag?"

"In the hall closet…" Caroline answered, taking the envelope and opening it. Clint slid past her and reached into the closet. "The pleasure of your company is requested and required at the Stark Estate through the 27th. Warm regards, Dir. Fury. Cute. I'm on warrants." Phil handed her a second envelope. She opened it and read its contents: "No, you're not, Happy Christmas, Robbie. Who'd she sucker into it?"

"Alan Gates." Phil answered. "Apparently the DA had already slated him to be on call for the weekend, so he volunteered."

"He would." Caroline muttered. "Give me ten minutes. There's coffee in the kitchen." She loaded a hockey bag with the Christmas presents and her personal gear, pulled a bra on under her T-shirt and a sweatshirt over.  She buried herself in her tablet on the ride out to the estate, letting Phil and Clint's conversation wash over her.

When they'd arrived at the estate, Caroline had pulled her gear out of the back of the SUV, brushing off the offer of aid from Steve, politely asked Jarvis for directions to a free guest room, and stalked off.

 

On Long Island, Andrew Hunt had been tasked with badger sitting while recovering from the aftereffects of exposure Roundup Ready cotton mistakenly spayed with an aerosolized alkali aquaadhesion. The mistake came to light when shirts made from the cotton were used at a charity Thanksgiving wet t-shirt contest. The shirts fused to the contestants' skin – and then the contestants to one another.

The experience had resulted in five proposals, four unusually large bills for data usage on the women's cell phones, and, over the course of 72 hours, two restraining orders.  The incident's topper had been a pigeon stuck to the tree it had been roosting in after it picked up a scrap of a shirt to use for its nest.  Andrew had been tasked with rescuing the pigeon.

The pigeon had not appreciated his efforts and attacked Andrew, leaving him with pecks and cuts on his face and hands, and scratching his cornea and sclera with a primary feather at the end of its wing. He'd recovered well from surgery, but SHIELD Medical was still slightly concerned that exposure to foreign substances on the bird's wing might cause him to develop Scott Summers Syndrome.  This disorder was usually diagnosed by lasers blasting out of the patient's infected eye, but could be spotted early if the primary care physician watched for acute cranio-rectal inversion. Badger-sitting, Fury and Hill reasoned, would serve as an excellent barometer of this particular symptom.

The badgers' earlier SHIELD-assigned agent, Debra Sims, was now back in the field office in Chicago, had sent the sett a Christmas present of a toy Bucky, the University of Wisconsin Badger.  The toy danced and sang the Wisconsin fight song when lights near it turned on.  The blinking lights on the Christmas tree Andrew had put up in the foaling barn (at eight feet, small, compared to the Tower's) were sufficient to trigger the toy.

The badgers were delighted. A group could usually be found perched in front of the tree, waiting for the lights to trigger the dancing Bucky.  Ella, the matriarch of the sett, had begun imitating the toy, and periodically, the badgers could be seen dancing as a group.

Andrew had started calling it badgerobics.

Tony called it a reminder of his first and only experiment with LSD.

"You experimented with Mormonism?" Steve asked.

"No, that's LDS. LSD's the hallucinogen." Phil explained, putting the new shipment of ersatz badger toys from Doctors Foster and Smith down inside one of the stalls. He climbed into the stall to talk to Ella about how the sett was managing in the barn.

"That was unusually far-sighted of you." Steve commented to Tony, checking over the set up for the Tower kits. "How soon was this after Afghanistan?"

"Oh, about negative seventeen years. I nearly ended up taking an extra year on the Ph.D.s because I wasn't sure if I'd been tripping when I got the letter telling me I'd passed my comps." Tony wandered over to the computer.

"Ah."  Steve pulled out the food bowls, then ran the answer back through in his head."Wait, negative seventeen? 1991?"

"Yep." Tony checked on the lock-out program he'd had Jarvis install to keep Andrew from over-straining his eyes. It had been only moderately successful. "Hunt, who the hell still reads actual hardcopy _books_?"

"I do." Andrew said placidly. "The badgers' conversational skills have been growing by leaps, bounds, and Seussian couplets."

"What part of 'limited reading time' didn't process, Agent Hunt?" Phil asked, considerably less amused.

Andrew handed the books in question to Phil. "The part where using Braille counted as using your eyes, sir."

Phil took in the raised print and bumps. "Good thinking."

"Thank you sir."

"Can we just return to the subject of Tony _experimenting_ with hallucinogens?" Steve asked, exasperated.

"'Experiment' implies there was a research question, a dependent variable _and_ an independent variable." Bruce said, looking up from Andrew's chart that SHIELD medical had forwarded to his tablet. "I'm not checking you over out here. There's a perfectly nice kitchen in the main house. Coming?"

"Yessir." Andrew answered, following Bruce back out of the barn.

Steve was still glaring at Tony. "Anything else? A career in the professional Russian Roulette league?"

"Nah, just the large scale building of weapons of mass destruction, semi-pro career as a morally bankrupt manwhore, and open heart surgery in an unsterile pothole environment. You know, usual stuff." Tony answered. "I'm going to take a walk." He got up from the computer and walked out of the barn.

Steve winced and climbed over the wall where Phil was sitting.  Noah, Ella's mate, came over, climbed into Steve's lap and shoved his head under Steve's hand.

Steve obligingly started scratching and sighed. "Can you get signs for the land mines?"

Phil shrugged. "Not that I've noticed. But then, I'm the guy who had to turn 40 and make contact with aliens before I owned up to what I wanted." He leaned back against the wall. "At least I got my head on straight, so to speak, before actually dying."

"Any ideas?"

Noah reached out and tapped on the wall. "I always used to bring Ella cluster berries."

"Cluster berries?" Steve asked.

"I believe Noah is referring to holly berries." Jarvis answered, having been networked into the barn when the badgers moved in.

"Thanks, Jarvis. Thanks, Noah, but I was actually asking Phil."

Phil's eyebrows rose and he snickered. "Steve, I'm a guy. Asking me for directions about anything is probably a poor plan. And I know how you feel about proper planning."

Steve's gaze shifted to Phil from Noah, then back to the badger.

"Besides, I've been watching you plan out this assault on Tony's steel-encased heart for months. You don't need my advice." Steve ducked his head and blushed. "So what are you doing still sitting here?"

Steve nudged Noah out of his lap and got up to follow Tony.

Ella climbed out of Phil's lap and went to join Noah. "So, cluster berries, eh? Think they'd be suitable for hedgehog-like lawyers?"

Ella shrugged. "Probably can't hurt," she tapped out.

"Has to beat slippers."

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

It took Steve two hours to find Tony. There were a lot of places to hide in the estate: the manor had twelve bedrooms, staff quarters, a four-bedroom guest house, pool house, a boat house, separate garages for the sedan, sports car, and vintage car collections, an attached garage for the regular-use vehicles, and somewhere in the mostly forested 500 acres were two workshops. Steve found Tony sitting on a bench out in a remote corner of the estate, looking at a small-ish clearing with granite slab laid in it.

Steve sat down. "Hi."

"Hey." Tony was staring at the clearing, elbows on his knees, hands hanging down. Even out here, 'on vacation,' his Mark VII bracelets were on his wrists. Not that Steve was much better for going off duty: the Shield was in the locker room in the gym.

Steve followed Tony's gaze: he didn't see anything particularly noticeable about the clearing. "So, I might have come off as a little… pushy."

"Ya think?" Tony asked.

"Mmm." Steve answered.

Tony pulled the collar of his jacket up and huddled a little deeper into it. "We don't have to do anything stupid like explain what all that was about, do we?"

"You mean how I'm still the Manichean 28-year-old seeing everything in black-and-white, and you're the world-weary, peripatetic genius orphaned at just the wrong time?"

"Yeah."

"Nope."

"Good." Tony leaned into Steve. "'Cause Christmas generally sucks badly enough in the best years."

"Yeah, you're not known for being sentimental." Steve said, snaking an arm around Tony's waist. "This is pretty."

Tony shrugged. "Just a convenient stopping spot."

Steve rubbed Tony's side a little and said, "That's what you say about _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_ , when you skip the bit about Sirius Black."

"Well yeah, but that's just stupid. _Habeas corpus_. You've got to have the body for a have his carcass act."

"Well, this carcass is getting cold, and you've only got a windbreaker. Come back to the house?"

"Yeah."

Steve tugged Tony to his feet and tucked his hand into Tony's back jeans pocket as they walked back.

*~*~*

The trouble with unexpected Christmas plans and last minute packing, Caroline reflected, was that important elements for the experience were either left at home or had not been acquired to begin with. Her hockey bag-luggage was loaded with what she needed for Thor's tour of the liquors of Earth, the requested Lebküchen tins from Germany, changes of clothes and appropriately loud holiday sweater. Prior to her kidnapping, her plans for Friday had included picking up toys for the badgers, stocking-stuffers for the team to go with the Lebküchen tins, and the generalized shopping run.

Acquisitions, she concluded while showering, were still necessary.  Caroline climbed out and had changed when the sound of an engine caught her ear. She looked out the window overlooking the circular drive to see the SHIELD SUV heading down the drive with Clint behind the wheel.

There went the only vehicle she was actually authorized to use.

"Blast." She pushed her head against the window jamb. Her stomach growled, and she sighed. "Lunch. Coffee." She pulled on shoes, grabbed her bag and went to find the kitchen.

After three wrong turns (linen closet, library, coat vault), Caroline gave up and asked. "Jarvis, Clint said you'd been installed in the house as well as the barns and gyms out here?"

"Yes, Ms. Lakehurst."

"Thank God." Caroline muttered. "Jarvis, which way to the kitchen?"

"One more flight down and on your left, Ms. Lakehurst."

"Jarvis, you've caught comma splices in my dissertation and the ever-popular two-word sentence fragment 'however, because.' Really, you can call me Caroline." She found her way to the back stairs and down into the kitchen.

"As you wish, Caroline."

Tony was handing Steve coffee in a mug with the periodic table of elements printed on it. "Hey, welcome to the asylum. Coffee?"

" _Please_." Caroline answered.

Steve'd heard less fervent prayers from lips of the dying. He handed her the mug Tony'd just passed him. "Have mine."

Caroline took a cautious sip, then swallowed down about half its contents. "You're a credit to your species, Steven Rogers. Thank you."

"Agent Agent kidnap you before you had yours?" Tony asked, passing Steve another mug.

"Nah, just before the second pot." She finished the mug and hip-checked Tony out of the way of a refill. "And if I'm going to brave the marauding mall hordes, I'll need the extra boost. And probably lunch. What can I get you gentlemen?" She opened the refrigerator door to survey the contents.

 

"Okay, apparently I needed that," Caroline said 45 minutes later, examining the crumbs and clementine skins remaining on her plate.

Steve snickered and passed her the [bag of](http://runningcupcake.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/DSC03040-300x225.jpg) [Lebküchen](http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRDgysUh0FnygiWivlKIRjOuoBGRdF9GIDaMVGbCzHjRBlx9u0n3Q). "Looks like. What were you doing?"

"Oh, Phil finally drove me to climbing the walls." She answered, pulling out a pink-frosted boot with chocolate drizzles over it. "Awesome wall, Tony, by the way. Thanks."

"You're welcome." Tony accepted the bag from Steve and pulled out a [chocolate covered heart.](http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT7XGQkH7mri_xKYZGRZuS74sVzxpLFPWhnBOA5gbI9DW2-Jmh6Rw)

"Who belayed?" Steve asked.

"Auto with Jarvis on full surveillance, then Clint wandered in. Spent another hour or so at it. Then he, the rat, went and took off with the car." She looked at Tony and sighed. "I need to ask a favor."

Tony grinned. "I get to have a lawyer in _my_ debt for a change. Awesome. Whatever you want."

Caroline raised an eyebrow. "Really? Have Kirkland and Kirkland taught you _nothing_? You don't agree to things before you…?" She looked at Steve.

He read his cue and smacked Tony on the back of the head before answering. "Before you have read the fine print." He captured the other man's hand and kissed the back of it.

Caroline smiled. "Well done."

"Fine. What can I do for you, counselor?" Tony nuzzled the back of Steve's hand in return.

"I need to borrow a car."

"Sure. Take the Ferrari."

"I've got to pick up some Christmas presents."

"Then take the Maserati."  Tony stood up and led them toward the attached garage, bringing his coffee. He gestured at the bright red sedan with the hand holding the mug.

Caroline followed and took in the array of vehicles presented. "Perhaps I should rephrase." She winced and looked at Tony. "Could I borrow a car that's worth less than six figures?"

"Not from my house." Tony answered automatically.

"Oooh-kay." Caroline said. "I thought the Audis at least listed for less than 90k?" She set her bag down and wandered toward the far end of the garage.

Tony laughed. "Stock? You think that even if I took delivery on a stock vehicle it'd stay that way?"

"He's got a point," Steve said.

"True." She sighed and ran a reverent, gentle, sweater-sleeve-covered finger over the Aston-Martin. "Let me get specific. Tony, can I borrow a car with an automatic transmission?"

Tony looked at her over the coffee mug. "Are you telling me you don't know how to drive a manual transmission?"

"No."

"One of these days you'll learn to stop asking her yes / no questions, right?" Steve asked.

"Possibly." Tony set the mug down and opened the key box on the wall. "Do you know how to drive a manual well?"

"If by 'well' you mean 'without stalling out every two hundred yards,' then, oh, hell, no." She looked at the next car over and her eyes narrowed. "Is that a Bugatti Veyron?"

"It started out that way, yep. Come on." Tony hooked the keys of the Audi sedan out of the box. "We've got about ten miles of paved road and the Stark Motors test track abuts the end of the estate. No way can I let this outrage go unavenged."

*~*~*

Tony Stark was a surprisingly good teacher. Having satisfied himself that Caroline did, indeed, have a solid understanding of the theory in driving a manual transmission, he sat back and let her stall out the Audi five times before making suggestions. Within an hour, he had her taking the European sport loop at speed.

"Nope, not yet. Give it another couple…" The engine whined up into the range of 4,500 RPM and Caroline shifted into fourth. "Yeah. There. Better. Now, don't brake. No, really, don't. Accelerate into the curve." He could see the doubt radiating off her. "Trust me. Floor it. Go. No, not yet. Hang back. A bit more. No. No. No." Tony blocked her from reaching for the gear lever. "Go on, it'll handle revs up to 8,000."

"Tony, are you…" Steve asked. Tony's eyes met his in the rear view mirror: their expression clearly said, ' _shut up_.'

The Audi's rear swung out as they came out of the S-curves, and the tachometer hit 6,500. "Now." Tony said.

Caroline depressed the clutch, shifted into fifth, released the clutch and floored the accelerator again. "Hey, no jarring thud this time." She muttered.

"Told you," Tony said, smug. "Take her around again before you start taking her back down. Aim for the pit lane at the end of the next lap. Good work. The Armor Overlords put you through the evasive driving class yet?"

"I'm on the waiting list. And really, I'd much rather get the hand-to-hand class first. _That_ , I can see using a lot more often than the evasive driving class." Caroline steered the car through the [chicane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicane) and brought the car into the straightaway. While she _did_ accelerate, she refrained from flooring the sedan.

Barely.

Tony's lip twitched in amusement as he felt the speed bug catch her.

"That seems… short-sighted of SHIELD." Steve commented as they approached a sharp right hairpin before the S-curves.

"Start downshifting." Tony said as they approached the S-curves again. She went back to fourth, but didn't hit the brakes. "Look at that, not freaking out at the curves this time."

Caroline snorted, but didn't reply. She shifted down into third, then second as she exited into the pit lane. She shrugged when they came to a halt. "Probably not much need to train me to handle a car I do not actually have, nor a place to park it." She looked at the gas tank, its needle hovering between ½ and ¼. "Is this my crappy driving or a Mythbusters moment? We started at ¾ of a tank; I thought manuals were supposed to be _more_ efficient."

Tony shrugged. "Partly you, partly the racing handling. You'll get better, and I'm still working on the 100 MPG racecar thing. Got distracted over the summer. You might have seen the footage."

Caroline chuckled. "Yeah, rebuilding a skyscraper does take up one's free time." She went to kill the engine.

"Hang on, I thought you needed to borrow a car?" Tony asked. "Errands? Christmas shopping?"

Caroline shook her head as if to clear it. "Sorry? Can I get a segue, please, Dr. Non Sequitur?"

Tony pulled his phone out of his pocket, "well, if you insist, but they're kind of fucked up…"

"No place to park it, remember?" Caroline cut him off. "And yes, I need to borrow a car, but I didn't really think you'd want to loan me the Audi A8 with custom-built and cast manual transmission. The Grantourismo's probably cheaper."

Tony snickered. "Maybe once upon a time. You can take us back to the house, and yeah, take the Audi into town. The turning radius on the Maserati's crap, and I haven't spent enough time playing with the paddle shifters lately. Hang a right at the end of the pit lane."

"Yessir." Caroline dropped them back at the house, turned on the StarkNavigator, and headed toward Stony Brook and Setauket.

*~*~*

The line at check-out was horrendous, even for the Friday before Christmas. The Target was crowded and hot, and some of the younger shoppers were starting to whine at their parents. Caroline wished she dared take off her sweater, but suspected that the holster and side-arm would cause a panic, and probably a stampede. Instead she stacked her bag and coat on the cart, opened her phone, and picked where she'd left off in the _Dog Cops_ fan fiction that had updated the previous night.

Naturally, by the time she had gotten back into the story, she was finally next in line. She closed the tablet, stuck it in her bag, was unloading the cart when the raised voice caught her attention.

"I don't understand. I just _checked_ that balance like ten minutes ago, back in electronics." A college-aged customer with the 'haven't slept in… ever' look of a new father looked at the 'declined' readout from the keypad and sighed. "Here, try this one." He slid another card through, and got the same message. "Dammit. I guess I'll just write a check."

The clerk looked from the bags in the cart to the total and then back at the customer. Caroline saw her hand slip to the 'manager and security, please!' button. "Have you ever written a check here before, sir?"

"No, usually I just use the cards." He was fumbling through his wallet, looking for a check in with the cash.

"Sir, I'm sorry, we're not going to be able to accept your check then. The total is over $100."

"What?" His face started to turn red: whether with anger or embarrassment, Caroline didn't care. "You mean you won't take my money?"

"Maybe a different card, sir?" The cashier offered.

"I tried them both. I don't get it. What's going on?"

The manager appeared. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Both his cards were declined. And he's never written a check here before, Tom."

The manager – Tom – looked from the total to the customer – and back. "Sir, I'm sorry, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"But I can _pay_ , dammit, there's money in the account, the check's not going to bounce…"

Security was walking toward the checkout stand.

"Uhm, Tom?" Caroline said, "perhaps I can be of assistance."

Tom looked at her and said "Miss, really, keep out of this."

"I don't think so." Caroline said. She turned to the customer. "Hi."  How old is he?"

"He?"

"Your baby. Who you're getting the Captain America footie pajamas for."

"Oh. He's just two weeks."

"Not sleeping through the night yet, right?"

He nodded.

"I'm Caroline." She extended her hand.

"Marshall." He answered, shaking her hand.

"You're just out of college? Stony Brook?" He nodded. "And your first real job?" He nodded again. "What do you do, Marshall?"

"Engineer. Raytheon."

"Good company."

"Yeah."

"So, here's the thing. Tom wants security to throw you out."

"Yeah, but I can…"

Caroline shook her head. "The computers don't know that. Doesn't matter why, does it?"

"I guess."

"Same thing's happened to me. And yeah, it was Christmas, and I was in grad school, and I actually _didn't_ have much money in the bank. I couldn't have written a check that wouldn't have broken the ceiling."

Marshall smiled. Tom, the manager, cleared his throat.

"So, can I ask you a favor?"

"Uh. Yeah. I guess."

Caroline passed her credit card through the card reader. "One day, you're going to be where I am. And you'll be able to do this for someone. Will you?" The authorization went through, and Caroline signed the keypad. Tom, the manager, visibly relaxed and waved security back.

The cashier pulled the receipt off the register and handed it to Caroline. She started ringing up Caroline's order.

"I… I don't understand. Why?"

"Paying down my karma debt." Caroline answered. She held the receipt out to Marshall. "It's a biggie. I'm a lawyer."

Marshall actually smiled. "But…" He looked kind of befuddled, then said "Uh. Okay. Sure." He took the receipt, and pushed the cart to the door.

Caroline watched him leave as Shawna kept ringing up Caroline's order.

"That was real nice of you." She said, hand typing in a bar-code number that wouldn't scan.

Caroline shrugged. "Like I said. Lawyer. Big karma bill."

"Wish we'd had more people like you in today. He was, what, the seventh?" Shawna asked the manager, Tom, who was still standing at her cashier's station.

"Twelfth." Tom answered. "We had four more while you were on break and another just now. Why can't people check their balances before they go shopping?"

"Is that unusual? I mean, it is Christmas…" Caroline said thoughtfully.

"Well, yeah, but even at Christmas we usually don't have more than, like, six, in a whole day. If nothing else, banks get really 'generous' at this time of year, allowing people to overdraw."

"Mmm. A nice $35 fee-per-overdraft Christmas present to themselves." Caroline groused.

Tom laughed, then stepped in when Shawna was about to ask if Caroline wanted to open a Red Card account with them. He keyed in his manager's code and authorized a 15% discount.

"Uhm?" Caroline asked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You saved me, Joe," Tom jerked his head at the security guy, "Shawna and that poor kid a _lot_ of hassle today. You didn't have to do that. And I don't have to do this. But I'm allowed." He smiled. "And it's Christmas, like you said. May I see the card and your ID?" Caroline passed them over, he compared photo to ID and to card, and passed them back. "Thanks. And thanks for shopping with Target, Ms. Lakehurst." He handed her her receipt. "Merry Christmas."

"Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Shawna. You too."  Caroline pushed the cart out to the Audi, loaded it up, corralled the cart, and headed to her next stop before going back to the Stark Mansion.

 

*~*~*

"And here's the thing," Caroline said, stirring the pot on the stove. "It wasn't just Target's systems. I ran into the same thing at the Waldbaum's."

"What were you getting at the Waldbaum's? Jarvis can order anything and get it delivered, remember?" Tony was waiting less-than-patiently for her to declare the mulled wine finished: since the sun had set an hour ago, the weather had gotten distinctly colder.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Stark, I'm not at liberty to reveal that information at this time." Caroline answered with a grin.

"You realize you're being very foolish. We have ways of making you talk…" Tony tried to twirl his moustache, only to realize the goatee didn't really lend itself to it.

"I'm sure. However, since I am currently in possession of the Glüwein, I suspect it is in your interest to let me go free. Spoon." Tony passed her a spoon, she tasted the wine, and set the spoon down. "Done. Mug, please!" She accepted a mug from him and passed it back, full.

Tony accepted and sipped, then contemplated chugging. "Is this stuff _legal_?"

"Didn't your grandfather partially finance this place with bootlegging? Him and Joe Kennedy, wasn't it?"

"Point." Tony replied. "Hey, Clint. Come in, take a load off, share your sad tale of the death of kings. Or queens. Whatever you've got." Caroline passed him another mug for Steve, who was in the next room.

"Is that stuff alcoholic?" Clint asked, sniffing the air.

"Ohhh, yeah." Tony asked.

"Can I have a Thor-sized tankard, then? I've had better afternoons in firefights. Without body armor."

"Dunno about Thor-sized, but tankard we can do." Caroline answered, passing a full, oversized mug to Clint. "How did your combat shopping mission go?"

Clint communed with the aroma wafting out of his mug, sipped, and then answered. "Oh my god, people are such _morons_."

"Oh?" Caroline lowered a pot watcher into the wine before picking up a snack tray and walking into the downstairs family room where Steve was building a fire.

"I know, I know, it's like saying 'water's wet.' It was checkout. I mean, really, how hard is it to check your card balance _before_ you go Christmas shopping?" Clint sat down on the couch, set his mug down, pulled the cheese-and-cracker platter toward him. "And the parking spot wars. I thought there was going to be a fistfight for a spot outside the H &M." He eyed the Stilton suspiciously before deciding to play it safe with the Brie and a piece of French bread.

Tony sat up from Steve's lap and put the mug of wine down. "Say that again."

Clint had just taken a bite, and swallowed before answering, "I thought parking near…"

"Not that. The other." Caroline said, leaning forward.

Clint complied, and told a story nearly identical to Caroline's tale from the Target.

"Jarvis?" Tony demanded at the end. "Start hacking the security logs at the credit card processors, please. Start with the biggest, then work your way down."

"The biggest is Butterworth and Grinch, sir."

"Then start there." Tony said. "I'll be in my office in five."

"You're going into the office?" Steve asked. "You usually don't fly the suit when you've been dri…"

"'Office' as in 'the room with the computers next to the library, Steve." Tony interrupted, standing up and heading for the stairs, mug still in hand. "One floor up and in the east wing."

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to goes to Bead for 'crapweasel,' my new favorite student-audience appropriate expletive!

Outside Pittsburgh, PA

"Okay, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, confectioner's sugar, granulated sugar, graham cracker crumbs." Darcy said into the phone, cart stopped in the seasonal products aisle, bag hanging off shoulder, hat pulled down over ears, grocery list in hand. Her umbrella dripped forlornly onto the floor of the Giant Eagle from where it rested in the cart's undercarriage.

" _Nabisco_ graham cracker crumbs, Darcy."  Darcy's mother, Karen was mixing cookies: she could hear the whine of the Kitchen-Aid's motor over the phone.

"Right. Hang on." Darcy juggled the phone and her purse to find a pen. The purse swung wide and banged into a display of red and green M&Ms where it knocked loose a bag precariously hanging over the edge. She dropped the pen and caught the bag before it hit the ground, tossed it into the cart and picked up the pen.

"What was that?" Karen asked. The mixer's motor stopped, and Darcy heard the rattle of what sounded like fine gravel going into the bowl. Cookies, then: her mother made almond crescents with chopped almonds in the dough.

"Nothing, Mom, just the usual Lewis grace and style under pressure. _Nabisco_ graham cracker crumbs, three blocks of cream cheese, full fat, none of that Olestra stuff, and a case of Diet Coke. Is that all?"

"No, we also need dog food, Fritos and orange juice, and you know Bennett only will drink the horrible Walmart generic?" Karen's irritation with this fact was betrayed by the 'clink' the now-empty little bowl made when she forcefully set it on the counter.

Darcy thought it was a good thing her Mom used Pyrex for the ingredients, or the almond crescents would have had shattered glass bits to bite Bennett back: her step-uncle was friendly when drunk, and gorged on anything in sight. And, knowing her luck, he would have just spent the whole holiday in the hospital, and Darcy would have been tasked with keeping him (a) company, (b) sober and (c) unsued for the sexual harassment of the medical staff. She sighed.

"Oh, God. Really? Do I have to? It's already eight, if I have to go there, too, I won't get back until 10 at least."

"Your Dad's already picking him up at the airport."

"Crapweasle."

"I know. At least you can get a better deal on the Diet Coke at the Walmart?" Karen offered apologetically.

"And stop at the liquor store on the way, because if Bennett's going to be in tonight, we'll need beer and vodka. Lots of vodka."

"Your uncle's not that bad," Karen said.

"Mom, last Christmas he tried to get drunk on the cooking wine."

"Oh, God, I'd forgotten that. Better get an extra box, then."

"Will do. Anything else?"

"I'll text if there is."

"Thanks, Mom. Love you."

"Love you too, hon. Good luck, see you soon." Her Mom hung up, and Darcy grabbed another bag of M&Ms and tossed them into the cart. Peanut, this time: she hoped they'd distract Bennett from the sugar cookies.

*~*~*

In the foaling barn, Ella the badger matriarch found she thoroughly approved of the grand-kits, and told Sam so. Moxie had taken to following Ella wherever she went, studying every element of the foaling barn. The side-effect of this was that periodically Moxie just fell asleep wherever Ella had stopped. Ella was carrying her grand-kit back to the whelping box when she first noticed that the creature Clint had set next to Bucky seemed to be doing something strange. Its ears wagged back and forth, and it rocked on its feet, similar to the way Bucky did when he sang his song. But this new creature didn't seem to have an actual tune, or words she recognized.

"Wheeep whibbit. Access. Access. Meeep! Meeep! Mack! Mook! Mark! Mark! Mark!"

Ella tilted her head at it, and listened carefully to it. She tapped at it to see if it replied. It didn't.

The tree lights came on and Bucky started singing and dancing, capturing the attention of Ella and the rest of the sett.

"Hey, guys." Bruce came in and sat down at the computer. "Good rhythm you've got there. Having fun?"

Ella tapped her answer back, "lots, thanks. What's that new thing?"

"Next to Bucky?" Ella tapped back confirmation. Bruce smiled. "It's called a Furby."

"It's not very bright, is it?" She asked.

"Not really, no." Bruce said, logging in and opening the data on the language program to see how Ella's group was doing. "Certainly not as bright as you lot."

"Thank you, Bruce!"

"You're welcome, Ella."

Ella wandered off to nap with the grand-kits.

*~*~*

Darcy stood in the toy aisle in the WalMart, looked at the text on her phone, and called her mother. "Mom, I'm confused: Danielle replacement get batteries? One, Carnegie Mellon would be pretty upset to have to replace her and two, I'm pretty sure that even WalMart doesn't stock librarians."

"Damn Autocorrect. I meant green paper plates for Danielle's Girl Scout troop's party, the last set got rained on and needed to be replaced."

"Ahh." Darby scribbled it on the list. "And what size batteries?"

"Double-A."

"Gotcha." Darcy looked around to see where batteries were, and started to push toward the opposite end of the store. "Anything else?"

"Let me check the list." Her Mom answered.

A plush of Furbies in their boxes was stacked into a pyramid at the end-cap Darcy was passing. She saw the streak of long, dark hair running toward her and swung the cart just in time to avoid being run into by the little girl was careening toward the display.

The top half of the display dislodged and clattered to the ground.

All the Furbies (apparently pre-loaded with batteries), squealed and shrieked in cacophony.

"Whmpoibbibbbit! Sneee! Mark! Mack! Gibbberie! Mark! Mark!"

"Darcy? Are you okay?" Karen asked.

"Fine, Mom, just knocked a whole display of Furbies. Let me call you back when I get to the batteries, okay?"

"Sure thing." Her Mom hung up, and Darcy spent five minutes picking up the boxes and re-stacking the toys.

She'd just finished when her phone went off with a cash-register noise: her bank, texting to tell her her cell phone payment had gone through. She cleared the text and headed across the store to the batteries.

*~*~*

"Even by our standards of weird, this is weird." Pepper said, looking at the transaction logs that Tony had printed out and handed her after an hour of trying to trace them on screen.

"It really is," Phil said, looking at his set of papers from Howard's old armchair. "Widespread, small, and inconsistent. Caroline?"

Caroline scribbled something on the blotter pad and hung up the landline before answering. "Got it, we're clear with a search warrant for suspected wire fraud. Clint, track down Natasha, we're both going to need to send notarized affidavits to Judge McNichols' office. And a case of brandy, she was _just_ about to get on the plane to go to her kids' in Minnesota."

"On it." Clint pulled his mobile out and texted Natasha, whom no-one had seen since that morning.

"Am I sending the brandy to Minnesota or her office?" Tony asked.

"And why Natasha?" Steve added, bringing in the 3D projector Tony had asked for from his in-house workshop (as opposed to the standalone explosives workshop, Tony'd explained when Caroline asked).

"Both, and because she actually _is_ a notary," Caroline answered. "Something I'm sure Pepper and Tony were _most_ glad to learn back in 2009."

"You have no idea." Pepper said. "Having to deal with Congress, Albany and the Mayor over that mess was bad enough: if I'd had to deal with the SEC, too, I might have actually quit. It's not all point-of-sale," she concluded, setting her papers down.

"And it's just as widespread in the e-retailers," Phil added. "And so far, the only charge processor _not_ impacted is Hemphill."

"Well, yeah, but they hired me." Tony said, unwinding the cable from the projector. "Steve, get the blinds on the window?" He sat down on the floor and pulled a CPU toward him.

"You mean they hired Stark Industries?" Caroline asked, picking up Pepper's set of papers and flipping through.

"No, they actually hired _me_." Tony said, looking over the open slots. "Is there an open USB slot on _any_ of those?" he put the cable in his mouth, reached up to the desk surface and started feeling around for something.

Caroline glanced around. "Doesn't look like it, nope."

Pepper saw the Phillips head screwdriver he was feeling for, and put it into his hand, adding "Hemphill figured out how much Senator Stern would have charged for a speaking fee for the medal presentation, tripled it, and offered Tony free rein in their systems. Apparently they had a major attack some time back?"

Phil nodded. "Collateral damage from the Windjammer Group fraud arrests. Hemphill had been using Windjammer to hedge their risk."

"Oops." Caroline murmured.

"Yeah, Winterthur Reinsurance was _not_ amused." Phil said.

Tony had pulled the cover off of the CPU, wired one peripheral in directly, freed up a USB port, replaced the cover, and plugged in the projector. "Gotta make these wireless. Anyway, Hemphill. They've got a small-scale AI running their security. Pretty much would take Jarvis to hack into them."  He climbed off the floor, tapped a command on the keyboard, and watched the tracks of the transactions pop up into 3D. "That's better. Jarvis, color-code them for point-of-sale and e-retail."

"And direct bank transactions," Steve said, securing the cord from the now-lowered blinds.

"Oh?" Phil asked.

"Mitzi Whittle from the philanthropy class called while I was getting the projector."

"Ah, so that what was shrill enough to start the crystal vibrating." Pepper said. "I'd wondered. What was on her alleged mind?"

"Apparently someone got into her personal cash account." Steve said, leaning against the wall and Tony air-conducting the datasets.

"How much is gone?" Caroline asked.

"Apparently all 250,000 dollars of it. She said the bank manager was, and I quote 'mean, snide and ungentlemanly'" Steve used air quotes: Caroline tried not to die of shock. "To her, and called her irresponsible and childish. She wanted me to come in and 'straighten him out.'"

Caroline didn't dare look at Pepper or Phil: they both looked like they were about to have hysterics, and if they went started laughing, she knew she'd start, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to stop.

"And you said?" Phil asked, stacking his papers on Tony's desk.

"That I'd come in and shake his hand, and that it was about time someone'd said that to her. And if someone had said that to her earlier, then maybe she'd have a reason to get up in the morning _other_ than getting her first martini."

"And she…?" Pepper asked.

"Shrieked high and loud enough that I could hear glass break on the other end of the line."

Phil put his head into his hands and howled like a loon. Caroline held out for two seconds before joining him, passing Pepper a Kleenex when she laughed herself into tears.

Pepper wiped her eyes and then asked, "does anyone still do catalogues? You know, calling L.L. Bean directly to order stuff?"

"Not nearly as much as they used to, Ms. Potts," Jarvis answered, "but several attacks can be linked to phoned-in purchases."

"Is it all personal cards?" Steve asked, looking at the lines as they changed color and created a rainbow web in the air.

"No, Captain: several hundred thousand dollars' worth of frauds are tied to business credit cards." Jarvis answered.

"Any particular _kind_ of businesses?" Clint asked, looking up from his phone. "Natasha's at Calverton airfield picking up Jane, she'll be back in an hour."

"No, Agent Barton: they are evenly distributed across the types listed by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics."

"Okay, then scratch 'just targeting private accounts and personal accounts." Clint said, using a finger to cross out those categories from the mid-air projection of the list of the thieves' targets.

"Jarvis, is there a starting point?" Steve asked. "Not a place, but a time or date it started?"

"It appears to have started in July, Captain."

"At this volume? How did we miss it?" Phil asked, finally getting his breath back.

"The volume of fraudulent charges appears to have been minimal until the end of August, Agent Coulson."

"Timeline, Jarvis." Tony said. "Let's see it."

Jarvis arranged the transactions by volume and date. They grew steadily until November, then spiked at Thanksgiving.

"Is that proportional to total transactions, Jarvis?" Pepper asked. "Black Friday, after all. Lots more transactions happening."

"It is not, Ms. Potts."

"Overlay," Tony ordered. "Total volume of transactions over the same period."

The data arranged itself neatly. The lines of fraudulent vs. legitimate charges wobbled all over the place, growing closer and farther apart at seemingly random intervals.

"Okay, this is looking like math, and I don't do math. I've got a note." Caroline said. "I'm going to go assemble – sorry, let me rephrase – I'm going to go put together something resembling dinner for us. Is Natasha just picking up Jane, or is Thor on his way in, too?" She asked Clint.

"He's on the same plane." Clint answered.

"And if you see Bruce, send him up, will you? This looks kind of familiar, and I can't place it." Tony said. "I think he's out in the badger barn."

"Will do," Caroline said, from the door.

" _How_ are you seeing a pattern in this?" She heard Clint ask as she walked down the hall.

Tony shrugged. "What, you mean you can't, Apollo?"

" _What_?" Clint asked.

"Well, you _are_ a blond archer," Steve said, sounding somewhat apologetic.

"Oh. Sorry, my brain went to _Battlestar Galactica_." Caroline heard Clint answer as she got to the stairs. She snickered and headed to the kitchen to start a soup-and-sandwich supper.

*~*~*

Caroline emptied another quart of custom-catered tomato soup into a stock pot, turned the heat up to medium, and turned on the robotic stirring device. "Jarvis, turn it down to a light simmer when it gets to a boil. Is Dr. Banner out in the barn with the sett?"

"He is, Caroline. He is quite absorbed at the moment, however: I suggest a personal approach."

"Great, into the chill again." Caroline pulled her parka off the hooks by the door, and crossed the back courtyard. She knocked on the door before sliding it open. "Hey, Bruce, Jarvis said…"

"Not now, Caroline." Bruce snapped, typing furiously. "Jarvis, is it shut down?"

"I'm afraid not, Dr. Banner. It's running on an outside wireless channel."

"Dammit!" Bruce slammed a hand into the desk: it went through, and the computer screen and keyboard fell down onto the ground where the screen cracked.

The vibration of the falling objects was enough to set off the singing tree skirt.

It began singing Hilary Duff's cover of "Jingle Bell Rock."

Bruce's hand clenched into a fist the same shade as the Christmas tree.

Caroline heard footsteps behind her: Andrew Hunt. He took in the scene, reached to his earpiece, said, "Code 13, we need backup at the barn for Dr. Banner, please," and then looked down at Caroline. "You know him better than I do. What's the plan?" He watched Bruce curling in on himself on the floor, fists clenched. A leg spasmed: the desk chair splintered.

"Uhm." Caroline looked over at the stalls where the badgers were: out of sight, all of them. "You get the tree skirt. Kill the power to the tree, get rid of Bucky."

"Bucky?"

"The Wisconsin badger."

"While you?"

"Try out my powers of persuasion."

"Crappy plan." Andrew commented.

"Got a better one?"

"Not really."

"Then go. Around, there's a door on the other side." She waved him around the barn, carefully unholstered her sidearm and set it into an open wall safe. She shut the safe door: it locked with a click.

Bruce looked at her from his fetal position on the floor, his shirt bursting at the shoulders. He snarled. "Get. Out."

"That's good advice." Caroline said, hands to her side and forward, palms toward Bruce. She didn't step any closer "I'm not very good at taking advice. From anyone, really, but especially not from mud-fuds."

Bruce looked back down at his hands and huffed. "Me either." His breath came hard and fast. "You should still get out."

"Yeah, I got that the first time." Caroline answered. "Okay if I sit down?"

"Your funeral." Bruce answered. Caroline shrugged and folded her legs under her tailor-style, hands still out. She was quite proud of not falling with a thud. "So you ignore mud-fuds' advice often?"

"Oh, yes. Every time I talk to my mother. You?"

"Talk…" Bruce's chest heaved, still curled around himself, "…to my mother?"

"Ignore mud-fuds' advice." Caroline replied, knowing Bruce's mother was dead, and wanting to steer _away_ from the minefield, not charge headlong into it. She slowly set her hands on her knees.

"Yeah."

"Often?"

Bruce's breathing started to even out. "Just last week." His shoulders started to contract to their normal size, shirt hanging loose. Caroline saw Andrew step in through the open door on the other side of the barn. The SHIELD agent looked at her, at the tree, and nodded.

"Pretty recent then." She thought for a second, then decided that since Bruce was so close shifting to the Hulk, he'd probably startle at Andrew's entry.

Startling Bruce right now was probably a worse idea than coming in and talking to him. "Andrew's on the other end of the barn: he's going to kill the power to the tree lights, get rid of that tree skirt, and take the toy badger out of here, okay?"

Bruce nodded. "Watch…" he took a deep breath and held it for a moment before letting it out slowly. He inhaled again. "Watch the branches and your eye, Andrew."

Andrew carefully pitched his voice lower and more quiet than usual. "I will, Dr. Banner." He moved to the tree, pulled the plug out of the wall, and then found the off-switch for the tree skirt. He pulled it toward him slowly, making sure not to topple the tree. Andrew folded it into quarters, set it on the ground next to the door. "I'm just going to get that dancing badger toy, okay?"

Bruce nodded, still doing his yoga breathing.

As Andrew walked to the side-table where the toy stood. Bruce flinched at the footstep, and Caroline quickly asked, "So, what didn't you do? The advice you didn't take?"

"Hank McCoy." Bruce answered, uncurling enough to sit up into lotus position. He relaxed his hands. "He told me to throw out a dummy variable, said it wasn't worth the degree of freedom."

"Dummy variable?" Caroline asked.

"A way to look at data to see if there's some outside variable causing the change you're looking at." Bruce answered, sounding more and more like himself. "They're binary."

"Ah." Andrew got the Wisconsin dancing badger and found its off switch. He nodded at Caroline and stood up to back out of the barn. "Andrew's leaving, okay?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Someone tapped Caroline on the shoulder, and she looked up.

Natasha. "Hey, Bruce. Let's go for a walk." She held out her hand.

Bruce nodded. "Yeah. Let's." He stood up and took her hand: they walked toward the door Andrew used.

Andrew stood aside as they left and walked toward the woods.

Caroline folded forward over her knees. She shivered, and her teeth started to chatter, not just in the cold.

Andrew crossed back over to her and pulled a blanket around her over the parka. He sat down next to her. "Yeah."

"I'm kinda surprised I'm still breathing." She said.

"Ditto."

"Gee, thanks." She shuddered deeply, burrowing under her coat and blanket.

"I meant me."

"That either of you remain in one piece never ceases to astonish _me_ ," said Phil. "What happened?"

"He… B-b-b-b-bruce was working on something on the c-c-c-computer," Caroline answered, stuttering through her still chattering teeth "it wasn't going well: Jarvis said it was running on… Jarvis?" She asked, waiting for a reply. There wasn't any.

"His connection out here depends on the desktop." Phil said. "Running?"

"Running on something outside. Bruce lost his temper, put a fist through the desk, and that set off the fucking tree skirt."

"That thing's a menace." Phil muttered. "Hunt, get rid of it. Permanently."

"Sir." Andrew got up. "And Bucky?"

"Bucky?" Steve arrived, shield in hand.

"He can stay. The other badgers like him." Phil answered. Hunt nodded and headed over to the badgers' tree to plug it back in.

"Bucky?" Steve asked again, taking in the shivering and teeth chattering.

"The dancing badger toy." Caroline said, still stuttering. She tried clenching her teeth together.

Steve's knelt down next to her. "No, let it go. It's not going to stop until you do." He rubbed her arms through the blanket and parka. "Sorry, I'm late. Had to get the shield out of the gym. Not leaving it _there_ again. Jarvis is totally absorbed with the data and I couldn't find the damn light switch."

"We're okay." Phil said. "Where's Tony?"

"Still working on the fraud thing." Steve kept up the motion over Caroline's arms and back, steady circles. The shivering slowed, and her teeth finally stopped chattering.

At the word 'fraud,' the Furby started to rock on its feet. Its ears twitched, and it emitted a high-pitched whine like a fax machine, or an old dial-up modem.

"Access obtained. Stream! Transferring! 847302891! 6741272842574!"

Everyone turned to stare at the bright pink and teal toy.

"Was that a _bank routing_ number?" Phil asked.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Caroline burrowed deeper under her blanket in the chair at the kitchen table, a mug of tomato soup in her hands. Steve had taken over the soup-and-sandwich operation, and brought over a grilled cheese sandwich.

"Are you warmer?" he asked, setting a hand on her shoulder and putting the plate in front of her.

She set the mug on the table and pulled the plate a little closer. "A little. The shivering and stuttering's stopped, at any rate. Has there been any progress?"

"Tony's got that look on his face that says he's thinking in numbers, and I heard Dr. Foster shout 'yes! Yes! I _knew_ they were evil!' and high-fived Tony." He crossed back to the kitchen to put together his own stack of sandwiches.

"Gotcha. Where's His Lordship?"

Steve paused, ladle of soup in midair, frowning. "That's a little... snide, isn't it?"

Caroline's blue eyes didn't shift their 1,000-yard stare at the fireplace in the other room. Her voice a little higher than her usual. "Is it? He _is_ Lord Thor Odinnson, Prince of Asgard and part-time Avenger. His Lordship is the polite way to speak about him in the third person. Isn't it?"

"Oh." Steve poured the soup into his bowl. "Sorry."  He crossed back to the table and set the bowl down before crossing back to retrieve his own platter of sandwiches.

"It's okay.  So where is he?"

"Rearranging the firewood.  Apparently stacking it bark-up is a sure-fire way to make sure the wood's damp when you put it on the fire."

"And smoky fires are anathema to his father."

"Really?" Steve set his sandwiches on the table and sat down.

"I think so. Would have to check my _Bullfinch's_."

Phil came in from the barn and hung his jacket on the hook next to Steve's shield.  He leaned against the island-counter, crossed his arms over his chest, biceps flexing under his sweater's sleeves, and Looked at Caroline. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Badgers," Caroline answered immediately.  "If it came to the worst, _I_ at least had a chance of getting out of the path of destruction: they're walled in. No escape route. Are they okay?"

"Ella got them out to the yard. Apparently Dr. Banner gives off alarming pheromones." Phil answered. 

She sighed in relief. "Okay, good. What about the affidavits?"

"They'll keep. That was a really, really lousy plan."

"I'm not disagreeing.  The affidavits will only keep until midnight, will Natasha be back by then?"

"They're usually only gone for about an hour after one of these incidents."  Phil scowled. "Badger protection is not part of your job description."

"I think it is, actually." Caroline said, spacey and vague. "I represent their interests. I might even be listed as their guardian _ad litem_." She stared at the soup, which was gently spinning in the mug, shades of red spiraling like a hurricane logo.  "And I was the only one there. Andrew got there after I did."

"And he suggested the course of action?" Phil straightened up from his lean against the island and went around to get himself a bowl of the beef-and-vegetable soup simmering next to the tomato.

"God, no. He called for backup. Then he asked what the hell to do while we stalled until y'all got there."

"And you said 'let's go in and distract him.'" Steve said.

"Sort of.  I'm only 1/4 of the way through Sun Tzu: it's been taking a backseat to the publishers. And the Coast Guard. And the dissertation. Sorry." She shivered again and sneezed.  Then she had a realization and banged her head into the table. "Oh, hell. The hard drive."

"The hard drive?" Phil asked. "It came through fine: the desk took most of the impact."

"Not the one in the barn. The one I left sitting on my kitchen table with the edits that I just made sitting on them.  Hell."

"They'll keep?" Steve asked.

"They'll have to." Caroline answered.

"Good. Let's talk about the planning and implementation of your response to this most recent incident," Captain Rogers said as Agent Coulson sat down with his own dinner.

Caroline sighed and tried to redirect her focus from the fireplace across the room.

*~*~*

Jane looked at the data and the streams of funds.  "Pepper, this is going to sound

weird."

"As opposed to the abundance of normalcy that dominates my life." Pepper replied, tracking the transfer routes and categorizing the transactions by size of bank. "What's weird this time?"

"The drains aren't big enough."  Jane said.  

"She's right." Tony said. "Remember? The Furby is so popular that they're completely out of stock in Boston."

Jane continued, chewing her thumbnail.  "If there are so many of those damn things out there, shouldn't there be billions of dollars missing, not fewer than 10 million?"

"There should," Pepper answered.  "So why aren't there?"

"Maybe it needs a catalyst?" Clint said, perched on the back of an armchair, 'supervising' the execution of the search warrant, but really reading _Lincoln: the Prairie Years_ by Carl Sandburg.

"Huh?" Tony asked.

"A catalyst. A substance you add to another solid, liquid or gas to provoke…" Clint put a bookmark into the paperback and set it back where he found it above his head on the bookshelf behind him and ducked the balled up cocktail napkin Tony lobbed at him.

"I _know_ what a catalyst is, Barton. I meant 'what kind of catalyst would you need to start a spree of bank robberies?'"

Clint thought about it for a moment, then said, "well, what's in the barn?" He hopped down from the back of the armchair and headed through the doorway to the hall. "We _know_ there's been one attempt from there."

*~*~*

An initial query to Jarvis had proven fruitless: when Bruce's fist had gone through the desk, Jarvis' connection to the barn had been severed. Citing her greater experience in torturing data to confession, Pepper stayed in the main house while Clint, Tony, and Jane stomped over to the barn, through snow that had just started to fall. Tony surveyed the destruction of the desk with a feeling of resignation. He'd seen this level of destruction in the past – usually after he'd misjudged the distance to the glasses in the liquor cabinet.

 "Okay, what do we have here?" Tony picked up the keyboard of the desktop and brushed it gently off before looking at the screen.  "Aside from some peripherals damage."

"We have Bucky the University of Wisconsin Badger," Clint said, "and a Furby. Actually, _the_ Furby that I need to wrap after this."

"We've got a Christmas tree." Jane said. "And about..." she did a head-count. "two dozen _badgers_?"

"Yeah, long story. Ask Thor." Tony tapped on the wall. "Hey, Ella. Is this everything in here that was here when Bruce was here?"

Ella emerged from the winter-weight burrow and tapped back rapidly.

Tony looked at Clint. "I got about half of that. 'Flat cave broken' – I'd guess she means the desk? This?" He held up a part of the desk and tapped his question out.

Ella tapped back an affirmative.

"And I got 'tree cover gone,' I think." Clint said. He tapped the phrase out awkwardly and then added the 'confirm, please?' signal to the end.

Ella confirmed that, as well.

"Okay, what's a tree cover?" Jane asked.

"Good question." Tony answered. "Ella? What's a tree cover?"

What ensued could charitably be described as an experiment in inter-species, open-entry charades competition.  Not knowing Morse Code, Jane picked up a pad of paper and pencil from the ground and transcribed.

"Fake."

"Glass? Plastic?"

"Grass, Clint." Tony said. "That was dot-dash-dot, not dot-dash-dot-dot."

"How the hell did you get dot-dash-dot out of that?" Clint demanded. "I heard four taps, not three…"

"Well, they don't call you Hawk _ear_ , do they?"

"Hey, I'll have you know that my hearing is…."

Ella chirruped at them impatiently. "Boys. Focus, please!"

Jane snorted. "I don't think we need a translation for that one." She looked at Ella and tapped the ground once. "This stuff or," she went over to the window and tapped the glass twice, "this stuff?"

Ella tapped once.

"Grass. Right." Tony said. "Fake grass."

Ella carried on tapping.

"Bowl"

"Root"

"Lighted"

"E-I-K end transmission?" Tony asked. "What's an eik?"

"No word break." Clint contradicted. "But still. What the heck's 'eikar' mean?"

"Of tree." Jane answered immediately. Both men stared at her. "My partner is an Asgaridan demi-God: the closest language to theirs we have is Norwegian, and I spent the summer in Tromsø?"

"Of tree. Right." Clint immediately agreed.

Ella tapped again and pointedly added "end transmission," before tugging Moxie down from the hay bale the kit had climbed by the scruff of her neck and taking her back to the burrow.

"Singing." Clint said.  He looked at the set of words Jane had written down.

Tony picked up the pen and put in slashes.  
"Tree / cover gone / Fake grass bowl / lighted of tree singing."

Jane took the pen back and scribbled underneath, "Four fifths a badger [cinquain](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinquain)."

Clint looked at the pair of them and said, "You people are weird."

Tony looked at the blinking lights of the Christmas tree and snapped his fingers. "Got it!"

"Got what?"

"The missing tree cover. That godforsaken tree skirt." Tony picked up the CPU. "Let's get to the lab."

Clint picked up the Furby, handed Jane the Bucky, and tapped his earpiece. "Phil, where's the tree skirt gotten to?"

*~*~*

Steve caught Tony by the scruff of the neck just as he was entering the lab, and pulled him up to the kitchen to eat.  He sat at the table, sandwich half in one hand, stylus in the other. "Okay, four items. Eleven unique combinations."

"Eleven?" Pepper asked.

"The full set, four unique combinations of three items, six unique pairs." Jane explained.

"So one out of those eleven would trigger the hack?"

"Two, actually," Jane answered. "The full set has all the elements, so that one's guaranteed to set it off."

The pile of blankets on the couch asked, "Jarvis, had of these attacks happened out here before today?" Caroline was trying to reassemble her brain into some kind of order, having gone through each and every detail of the confrontation in the barn with Phil and Steve three times. She found little comfort in the knowledge that Andrew was now being subjected to the same ritual with Phil: unlike Caroline, the young SHIELD agent had been _trained_ to withstand torture.

"No, Caroline."

"So you only need to test sets that include items that were new today. That's the tree skirt and the Furby." Caroline poked her head out from under her blanket fort and stared at the fire, "which gets rid of a whole whopping one combination – CPU and Bucky."

"Thought you said you were bad at math." Tony said, scratching out the full combination and the combination that only included the CPU and Bucky.

"No, I said I have a note and I don't _do_ math." Caroline countered.

"Where did you get a note?" Tony demanded.

"Colonel Fury."

Clint snorted beer out his nose and nearly on to the affidavit Natasha was notarizing. She glared at him, signed her notary stamp and took the other affidavit over to Caroline for affirmation, signature and notarization.

"So let's start with the ones that are newest: tree skirt, Furby; CPU, tree skirt, Furby; Bucky, tree skirt, Furby." Jane said.

"Sounds good." Tony wolfed the sandwich, saved the combinations and delivered them to the lab. "Ready when you are."

Bruce finished his tea and set his mug down with a definite thump. "I think I'll take another walk," he said, standing up.

Steve joined Bruce. "I found a really quiet spot earlier today. Want to see it?"

"Oh, God, yes. Let's go."

"I'll get the ear plugs," Pepper said.  "Is Thor still re-stacking the firewood?"

"I think so," Jane answered.

"I'll let him know to get out of ear-shot on my way to the lab." Clint said, pushing back from the table.

*~*~*

The CPU – tree skirt – Furby combination was a wash-out. Tony scratched the combination off the projected white-board with a flourish. "Next combination is… Bucky, tree skirt, Furby."

"Ugh. Are there any _non-_ tree skirt combinations?" Clint asked.

"Yeah, but then there's a good chance we'll have to come back to the ones _with_ the tree skirt."

"Right. Let's get it over with, then."

"That's what I thought." Tony answered. "Furby?"

"On." Jane answered.

"Bucky?"

"On." Clint answered.

"Ear plugs?"

Jane and Clint put their ear plugs in. "Jarvis, visual alert if a hack attempt begins." Tony put in his ear plugs and plugged in the tree skirt.

Clint took a deep breath and stomped on the tree skirt.

A Chimpmunks' version of "Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime!" screeched out, filling the lab.

Upstairs, Pepper, Caroline and Natasha flinched.

Jarvis blinked the alarm.

Tony yanked the power from the tree skirt and pulled his earplugs out. "Got the hack blocked, Jarvis?"

"Yes, sir, but the attack is still occurring."

Jane scrambled to find the off switch on the Furby. "Jeesh, how the hell do you turn this _OFF?_ "

Tony picked up a gauntlet he'd been working on and aimed it at the Furby. Jane squeaked and dropped it on to the counter, quickly stepping back.

"No, don't! Phil will kill us!" Clint shouted, switching off Bucky and reaching to rescue the Furby.

"Attack halted." Jarvis immediately reported. Jane blinked and pulled her earplugs out.

Tony stared at the badger in Clint's hand.  "All we need is a bayonet in the bedroom and I think we've got our suspect."

"You had that one prepared in advance, didn't you." Jane said.

"Along with flintlock in the fur vault and trebuchet on the terrace." Tony answered.  "Jarvis, message Agent Coulson: we've got it."

"Understood, sir."

*~*~*

Bruce sat down on the bench Steve led them to. "You're right. This is nice. Quiet. How'd you find it?"

"Found Tony out here earlier today." Steve answered, leaning against a tree and staring out at the clearing.

"Ah." Bruce gazed at the clearing, then up at the moonlight reflecting off the fast-moving clouds overhead. "He say what brought him out here?"

"Oh, I know the answer to that. Me." Bruce looked at him, eyebrow raised. "I got a little… old fashioned about the LSD after you and Andrew left the barn."

"Mmm." Bruce nestled further into his parka and sweater.  "He say why he specifically came here?"

"Not really.  I figure it's 'cause it's the farthest he could get away from me without actually running away."

"Steve." Steve looked at Bruce. "Knock it off, kid.  Not everything's your fault."

"Yeah, I guess."

Bruce rolled his eyes, then rolled a snowball. It was the light, powdery stuff that looked pretty and made for lousy construction: half of it fell off before it got to the back of Steve's head and slid down the back of his shirt.

"Hey!"  Steve scooped a handful up and threw it back.

Bruce batted it away, laughing. "Seriously, Steve. Lighten up."

"Good one." Steve looked down at the slab where he'd grabbed the snow. "Huh." He knelt down and brushed more of the snow away. "Son of a bitch. No wonder he thinks Christmas sucks."  Steve stood up and brushed the snow off his hands.

Bruce was staring at his mobile. "We're clear to go back – they got it."

"Which was it?"

"The Furby and the toy badger."

"Damn. I was hoping for the damn tree skirt."

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer applies: This story is based on characters created by Stan Lee et al, and that are currently in circulation in print and film through Marvel Comics, among others. No money is being made by the author from this story, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. All rights remain the owners'.
> 
> The Rockefeller Foundation 'Philanthropy Workshop' is real. Blame [Copperbadge](http://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge) for exposing their existence to me.


End file.
